1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to computers, and more particularly to a method, system, and computer program product for implementing policies in a managed systems environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
A managed systems environment may support attachment of a wide variety of heterogeneous entities, such as host servers, disk array controllers, storage volumes, and client systems. A networked system in the environment may include multiple networks, such as one or more storage area networks (SANs) and/or local area networks (LANs). The networked system may be developed via connections to one or more network switches, forming a fabric through which the entities may communicate. As numerous hardware and software vendors have developed custom storage solutions, applications, and operating system interfaces, problems may arise in attempting to integrate multiple entities in a networked system. For example, a networked system may include host servers executing UNIX® and UNIX-like operating systems (e.g., Solaris®, Linux®, AIX®), Microsoft® Windows®, and IBM® z/OS®.
Networked environments such as the SAN environment are rarely static, necessitating frequent correlation and analysis to understand the relationship between various entities and resources. With the advent of virtualization in managed systems environments, including virtualized storage management, tracking an application's relationship to the entities in the system in dynamic fashion with respect to time can be challenging. Currently there is no mechanism for administrators to holistically correlate the various entities in managed systems environments based on the context of the action being performed (provisioning, resiliency, chargeback, reporting, etc.). The challenge of integration becomes increasingly difficult as the administrator has to frequently deal with growing scope of applications encompassing databases and file systems.